


Let me feel the blow when it lands

by dimtraces



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Episode 4.21: Brothers, Gen, Magic, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: Savage watches his brother’s restoration, and he remembers.





	Let me feel the blow when it lands

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** mention of fratricide and mind control.

The new brother whimpers, and Savage wonders whether he’s made a mistake. This isn’t sleep, but that’s what the Mother had said after She’d lured Her prize through the sheltering black mists with Her acid light. She’d ordered, “Now, sleep,” and Her pale finger had crept towards Maul’s brow. The old legs like a massive spider, they are gone, and quick: no chance of escape, not anymore, none except grovelling and crawling and dragging himself away, and no reason to want it. She’d touched him lightly. Dropped him, back down, onto the bed. A familiar scene.

The tremors are a new addition, Savage thinks. He doesn’t quite remember, but it can’t have been like this, the last time. He can’t have looked this helpless back in the last life, and this isn’t sleep.

The brother—Her _son_ , Talzin called him—he shivers and groans, sounds darting away into the night like quivering little animals, and Savage takes an involuntary half-step forward. Something’s wrong. Somehow, it hurts. It hurts Maul. Maul is scared. It’s something Savage could have known, he realizes; he could have had this thought at a time when it was useful, could have warned the Mother, could have told Her that Her son is not pliant but skittish and distrustful. That he would not submit to Her will as easily.

That’s what must be happening now, futile resistance causing pain. That’s why it’s different.

Maul doesn’t know yet he is Hers.

It’s not his fault, Savage could have explained. He was not ready to listen. He shied away when Savage brought him water on the ship. He wedged into a corner and trembled, he gibbered and begged. He was too suspicious to sleep, no matter how many songs Savage sang, and he watched Savage’s splayed fingers, his hunched crouching still-hulking body—there is little he can do to appear harmless now, but oh how he tried—watched it with wide open eyes. He was hurt and abandoned for a very long time. He’s resisting. He’s just afraid.

Savage could have made excuses for him. Should have. He didn’t, and now Maul is trembling.

It consumes, the slight movement, it hurts; but there has been a hole gnawing Savage’s gut for hours now, a feeling that somehow, somewhy, bringing Maul here—to Her who said he is Her own—would be a mistake, and now he understands that he is nervous that She will break the fragile trust he has built with his new brother. The silent pact, when he tempted Maul onto the ship with food and then _gave_ it. Food. Something better than the glowing magic that the Mother has been luring Maul with, Savage dares to think. Something useful. Something real.

Maul is whimpering. The muscles of Savage’s jaw bulge and gnash in response, but there are no words to say now. There have never been the right words: Savage hasn’t ever been good at using his tongue—it has betrayed him, words twisted, giving Her service in return for no-one’s life at all—and even Maul, he did not lure here on the strength of an argument. He offered food, and then he gave it. He wishes he hadn’t, now, but wanting to keep Maul’s trust for himself is selfish, and it’s too late, anyway. There was no other option. Savage didn’t know how to help that terrified mutilated man in the cave, and besides, She ordered it. He obeyed. He was made to do it. It’s what he was made for. The mistake—if it is a mistake—is done.

“Now, what?” Savage asks, instead.

“Now, we begin,” the Mother replies. She chants. She moves Her hand, gleaming as a sunbleached bone in the dark.

Her son screams. He writhes. He is engulfed in Her magic. He is deep inside, and the green light is bright, but not so bright that it blinds Savage to Maul’s terror, to the grimace on his face. Savage wishes it was brighter, and doesn’t: this is his brother. This is Her son, and She does not shudder and cringe in sympathy.

She continues her work, and Maul quails. Savage cannot watch, but he must. The mistake is done. The pain is here. This is the last he’ll see of his brother. To root his bones and steady his gaping mouth, he remembers his other mistakes. Master Dooku was particularly good at spotting them, and there went rarely a day without punishment. But Savage also never worked up the nerve to ask Brother Cholya how to make the stuffed orisnails taste so good, and then he died. Savage didn’t tell his brother how much he loved… Maul judders. It has turned out that Savage’s judgment is not good at all. He’s made so many mistakes before. Maul’s whimpers are so quiet. A brother, in pain; a brother, terrified; a brother, dy… Following the Sister to attack Master Dooku, when Savage knew no way to defend against such power: a stupid mistake, and he never even knew why he made it. It should have been obvious. He should have known. Following the Sister. _He should have known his brother wouldn’t—_

Maul shivers, and wanting to protect him from his Mother is just the impulse towards another mistake, Savage decides. Savage didn’t know how to help that terrified mutilated man in the cave. This must be help. She is the Mother, and Maul is Her son.

She watches his pain. She does not shudder. Calmly, she watches.

He is engulfed in light, and Savage feels it seep into his brother’s skin. He feels the white worm with her gaping teeth by his mouth, wriggling deep inside and slipping his fingers. Refusing his grasp. There is no grasp: he doesn’t attempt to stop it, does not resist when She pulls him inside. He allowed it. He will be the price for life. There is light. There is a bed under his back. He doesn’t remember what it looked like, but it can’t have been like this. This is painful, and Maul is whimpering.

Hands are touching his body, his mind, caressing everything that is there. Nothing is hidden. They linger and they are light, and they are not real. They tear out what is useless. The Mother is pulling something that looks like soft firesmoke from Maul’s head. Something that was a part of him, and now isn’t; something dark and secret. Trash.

Her fingers, discarding parts of his new brother.

Taking away what She does not need.

Taking—Savage wonders whether She’s discarding the moments from the ship. Whether She’s discarding the long hours he spent in the unlit cargo hold of his stolen ship, many few steps away from Maul, listening, knowing approach would be threat and retreat abandonment. Keeping watch out of the corner of his eyes, looking for desperate scratches and self-harm and not knowing how to stop them if he saw. The way he kept his fists unballed. The way Savage flattened himself on the floor, aware that he was so much bigger than his brother and trying not to be. His attempt, after several hours, to sneak out to leave and relieve his bladder, without scaring a scared man and without turning his back to an attack. The way he ended up on crawling on his belly, backwards, like a worm. Maul’s short bark of a laugh. The _laugh_.

She’s taking it all, and Savage wonders: whether She even needs to. It was barely anything.

It didn’t look like this, the last time. There was a bed under his back and a pale worm devouring his mind, but Savage can’t have looked this helpless. Back then, She took his memories of Feral, covered the thousands of nights spent singing and the breakfasts and the ballgames and the hunger and the loss of a toy garbird on the eve of the second Feast of the Moons, the long search and the incessant biteflies, the crib and the bonfires and the secrets he was not supposed to have overheard and the secrets he was told and the broken leg two years ago and the stew his brother hated and the fights and the curve of the nose and the frown, the worry, the name, She covered them all with Her light until he could not see them. Her sun, blinding him to his life.

She took them all so he would be Hers. So he would kill Feral.

And now, the new brother will… Savage has served his use. He helped Maul. He brought him here, just like the Mother ordered; he obeyed and he succeeded. It’s—unfair, to order him killed now. He obeyed. He cannot rid himself of the thought. He obeyed, he did everything She asked for, and Feral died. He should have known that. _He shouldn’t have believed he could do anything to save—_

It doesn’t matter, Savage decides. He has always known he would die. It was not a mistake, when he fled to the Mother an utter failure, swollen and barely able to walk. When he told Her that he was weaker than Dooku, and the Sister had no use for him left. He knew he would die then. Now. The time does not matter. It was not a mistake to come back here again, and it was not a mistake to watch Her reach into his brother’s mind, the way She did the last time too. To watch Her discard the terrified mutilated man, the new brother he’s come to know. He didn’t know how to help that man. This is help. This isn’t sleep. This is pain. He’s watching. He wishes someone would have watched him, the last time, that someone would have understood why he—

Her light takes the old rough horns, makes them smooth. It takes the soft firesmoke. It takes the sores Savage couldn’t approach to treat, and smooths out the ribs in the way a day of food never could.

It appends legs onto the torso, bright gleaming things he could never have given his brother.

It leaves.

It leaves, and what’s left is _Her son_.

That’s who he is now, not Savage’s new brother, Savage realizes seconds after he’s run to his side, unthinking, as soon as She was done. The light is gone. Maul isn’t whimpering. He isn’t mumbling to himself. He is Her creature now. Savage should have known that, and still… he’s run straight into his grasp.

He can’t quite remember, but it probably wasn’t like this, the last time. Feral was quick. He could have escaped an attack as inept as this. Maul’s completely missed the neck. He’s grabbing Savage’s face instead.

A new body is hard to live in, Savage knows. He should have expected that Maul will struggle at first. Maul’s trying. He’s just getting used to it. Any second now, he will adjust his grip. Will notice, perhaps, that Savage’s new neck is too thick for his fingers to span and break even if he uses both hands, and he’ll change his strategy—the new legs could kick him to death, or maybe a well-aimed headbutt—but that does not matter.

Any second now, Savage will die.

He has always known he would, but now, seconds from it, he feels his hearts hammering his chest. He feels like crying. He doesn’t want to. He remembers Maul’s wide dark pupils tracking the food he promised and gave. When Savage returned after the piss break, carrying scrounged-up sweets and several water bottles, Maul came close enough to snatch them from his hands. He wonders: will the light recede and dim, as it has done by now for Savage, and will the moments it took return? Will Maul, in time, know that Savage was his brother? That is the pain. Savage does not want to die now. He does not want his brother to remember having done this. There’s no way to live after this mistake.

But there is a hand clamped tight on his jaw.

He cannot say, _Brother, I do not blame you._

.

_(Maul does not kill him. “Brother,” he says, and then he rants about revenge and Jedi and Kenobi, and Savage breathes out and in and out. Breathes. It’s not the same, but almost, almost, like that terrified mutilated man in the cave. Like the new brother is not gone. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe that’s why he didn’t kill Savage. Savage won’t be able to decide for a long while whether his life means the Mother still has use of him, too, or—_

_Whether Maul was strong enough for the unlit cargo hold to survive Her light.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Watching Clone Wars episodes for fic research is incredibly unproductive when you get distracted halfway through, wondering, "What is Savage thinking about right now?" Or productive, depending how you feel about my angst-peddling ways I guess. Savage's guess at what's going on may or may not be completely off the mark. For Savage with his tapetum lucidum, enslaved by pale-skinned Nightsisters using magic that glows, light is scarier than dark
> 
> Title's from [Daniel 12:8 (Third) by the Mountain Goats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dUFiPaUdqA)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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